He's Got My Back

If the title of this post is conjuring up images in your head of Greg rescuing me from a crowd of dangerous men in whose vicinity I was practicing my new found eyelash fluttering skills which were only meant to be seen by Greg, across the table of our white clothed, candlelit table in the expensive Viennese restaurant in which we were dining, when they approached our table to flirt back in their own crude way, then please, close you're eyes and imagine away (and add in all sorts of heroic acts and clever retorts by my dearly beloved, 'cause he really is chivalrous like that) and join us back here at this post when you're ready for a change of subject, as that never actually happened and is not what this post is about.
please insert three to four periods in the proceeding paragraph if you don't approve of my marathon run-on sentence.
While I'm sure that would make for a much more engrossing post, it is not the tale I have to tell. MY tale is about the second most captivating thing I could write about: health issues! Now that I've got your attention, let's begin.

Just after Greg and I were married, I was feeling so independent and grown up, running my own household, having someone to "take care of," finding a job to help get my husband through the rest of school etc. While the rest of me was busy with all these adult, responsible activities, my skin was still acting like that of a teenager. I found this to be rude and irritating. I think it should have put forth more of an effort to act mature instead of undermining my adulthood. I had always wanted to go on Accutane and come out with beautiful, amazing skin, but I hadn't had the opportunity. It seemed to me like it was now or never, since you can't be on Accutane if there's any possibility that you may become pregnant. So I saw a dermatologist who agreed that I could begin the six month round (or was it three? It felt like six.) of taking the medication.

Accutane almost immediately cleared up my skin. It also made it so I didn't need to wash my hair every day, for the first time in my life (or at least since I was twelve, before which time my hair was only washed during my weekly bath/shower when my sister and I would shower together and pretend we were under a waterfall and the floral shower curtain was the wildflower covered mountain). But that wasn't all it did for me. It also ruined my back. I started having back pain early on while taking the medication and it continued to get worse and worse. I found I was unable to keep up with all my responsibilities as a mother's helper, but the family I worked for were super nice and relieved me of the dish washing which was my main back breaker, and didn't mind me laying around in between bouts of playing with/feeding the twins. I assumed my back would feel better once I finished my medication. It sort of did.

But mostly it didn't. Since then I have had recurring spells of back pain. Weeks where I could not do some of the very basics of housekeeping. Anything that required you to work with something in front of you i.e. dish washing, laundry hanging and vacuuming. I could only choose one of those things to do each day. It should have been an awesome excuse not to clean, but it was really just a pain, in every sense of the word. In short I'm slightly crippled. Unfortunately I'm afraid I probably will be forever. Oh, I have gone for months without any problems at all, but I have also had entire months where I couldn't sleep past 4 am because the pain was so bad. (aren't you enjoying this Tour of Lisa's Health Issues? FUN!)

Now for the part where Greg's got my back. Our backyard when we moved in was a wasteland of thick weeds. Greg spent days out pulling those weeds. When it was about half finished we decided to hire a neighborhood kid to finish it for us, because Greg's back wasn't handling it all that well. Fast forward a month to where he starts to mention once in a while that his back really hurts (he never mentions if anything hurts). A week later he's walking like an old man in the morning. Another week and he's walking like an old man all the time. Do you think I cried the next week when I saw him coming up the front stairs with a cane in his hand? Maybe a little.

When he started having problems walking in a position that didn't make him look like a caveman, he went to the doctor. He had some x-rays and even confessed to me that he was worried it might be something serious. Fortunately it doesn't look like anything serious. It's just that now he can't sit down or stand up in under 3 minutes and to get into laying position might take 5, with LOTS of pain, and I can't watch him attempt it because a) he doesn't want me to (duh) and b) it doesn't make me feel all happy and sunshiny. He has been waking up 2 or 3 times a night to get up (5 minute process) and walk around to get his back into sleepable position again.

We've figured out that he has sciatica (it goes all the way down his leg at this point). Apparently it's very likely that it will go away within a few months. He's trying to get lots of exercise, has some funky laser and magnetic therapy, and gets plenty of rest as well (although I still have to force him to let me do things sometimes). The other day I was carrying the groceries upstairs from the car and he was very apologetic that I had to do all the manly duties, besides my regular wifely duties. I told him I didn't mind, and he said, "I now pronounce you man and wife."

I meant to post this on Thursday, but posted about the award instead, and I'm so glad I did, because Greg's back is definitely improving! He hardly uses the cane at all! The last 2 nights he's only been waking up once a night for his little walk. I'm so glad to see that he is feeling so much better! I hope to have a real man as man of the house someday soon!

Now that he's not walking like a Neanderthal anymore, I'm hoping I can get him to stop dragging me around by my hair*.
*He has never actually dragged me around by my hair. I just have a hard time ending my posts sometimes and this time it just seemed right to end it with a lamer-than-usual joke.